


Fragment

by Beleriandings



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: (sort of), Gen, Parental-ish relationships, Post-Canon, Recovery, very important pieces of splintered wood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6741022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What I meant to say is, I want to thank you, Sabriel.” He smiled. “You saved me, when I couldn’t save myself.” He held out the piece of wind flute. “Here. I don’t need it anymore, so I’m giving it back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragment

It was early morning and the sun was flooding in through the window. Nicholas Sayre hadn’t seen sunlight like this in… well, he didn’t even know how long. Just another gap in his memory, he had realised at some point after he had awoken to see it streaming through the muslin curtains, motes of dust dancing in the brightness. These last months, all he could remember was clouds and rain, the guttering flames of sulphur matches and clockwork ignitors which took several tries to light, as often as not, and by the end they had failed altogether.

After that, there had only been lightning. 

As a child, he had always pressed his nose to the cold glass and stared out of the window in fascination when there was a lightning storm, fascinated by it. Even when he was older, storms had always appealed to Nick from a scientific point of view; an electric current ionising the atmosphere and causing the air to emit light as it sought a path to the ground. Counting the seconds between the flash and the rumble of thunder, calculating the distance to the storm from the speed of sound… these things had always given him a sense of satisfaction, that what he knew about the world was right and true.  

He almost laughed at that, now. 

He had seen more lightning these past months than he had ever thought to see in a lifetime. It was burned into his mind, his heart, and he saw it in his dreams. Lirael had assured him he would heal, given time and the balm of Charter magic - and somehow, he knew what she meant by that, thought once he might have scoffed. He believed her though, completely. 

But if healing was to come, he sometimes thought, it hadn’t come yet. It had been a week, perhaps, since he had been returned from Death, his spirit sealed into his body by the Charter, the last act of the Dog as she departed for who knew where. Nick had had all this explained to him, though he had to admit he was none the wiser about what any of it really meant. All he knew was the Charter mark on his forehead; its glow against his skin was strange, but very warm. Very comforting too, especially in the dead of night when the nightmares had him waking with a gasp and a trembling cold sweat, his weakened, wasted muscles protesting even at the small motion of sitting bolt upright in his bed. 

The Charter though; he had seen Sam and Lirael do incredible things - incredible in the literal sense of the word - that were also… well, he could only call it _beautiful_ , and good. Very unspecific, ill-defined terms, Nick knew, and that bothered him slightly, but he knew he could afford to put off the analysis of what the Charter really was, and what it would mean for him. 

After all, he now had a whole lifetime ahead of him to do just that. 

For now it was just a comfort, as it had been before. He smiled a little as he looked over at his bedside table, on which were set a glass of water, a golden coin, an old pair of wire-rimmed glasses that someone had found for him. The glasses were a little scratched and not quite his correct prescription, but better than nothing and certainly good enough for the time being. Beside these things lay a fragment of splintered wood, Charter marks drifting peaceably over its surface. He felt a little better just seeing it. 

A quiet knock at the door startled him out of his musings. He said nothing, and the knock came again. Nick frowned; it could be one of the nurses, but they normally just walked in without waiting for him to reply. “Come in?” he said, gingerly. “Sorry I can’t get up” he began, as the door clicked open, starting to swing inwards. “The doctor said I’d be able to move better in - ” he broke off, the words dying in his throat. “Um. My Lady - Queen - Abhorsen? Ma’am…”

“Just Sabriel will do” she said, gently. She smiled a little, the shadows under her eyes clear as she gestured at the Ancelstierran clothes she wore, a plain dress of woven dark blue wool with long, tightly fitting sleeves, plain flat shoes, her hair pinned up neatly. “While we’re here, my husband and I are leaving such titles behind, at least until things have calmed down in Ancelstierre, by which time we shall have met with your father and uncle. A meeting to which you, too, are of course welcome, if you are feeling able.” She hesitated. “Though of course there is no obligation. I can well understand why you may want nothing to do with the political and diplomatic furore that is surely inevitable even if we do manage to maintain some level of secrecy. Any who have even the slightest inkling of what you have been through would agree.” 

Her eyes were sympathetic, but anger flickered there behind them, a hard-headed rage undercut with power, precise and controlled. For a moment he almost felt afraid. But not for himself, he knew; this anger was not directed at him, but at those that had hurt him, and by this he was comforted. 

Nick nodded, his throat dry. “Of course.” It was then that the manners that had been drilled into him for as long as he could remember kicked in. “Please, do sit down” he said, gesturing awkwardly at the two chairs that had been placed at the bedside, and Sabriel sat. 

The last person who had visited him was Sam, his third or fourth visit Nick thought. Not that he was very sure; he wasn’t even quite certain how long he had been in this hospital bed, the days after his return from Death - and he still twitched instinctively against calling it that, even in his own head - one long blur of strangeness, of medicine and Charter magic and indistinct figures moving to and fro just out of his line of vision. Of nightmares soothed by the hands of friends and strangers. 

Lirael had been there, too, but he thought that part might have been a dream. Lirael had been lying beside him, the last he remembered, with people crowded about her. He knew that she was alive though, and that she would be alright, although he didn’t quite know _how_ he knew. But she was strong, stronger than he was, and she would be fine. It was a comforting thought, and the one that had let him slip unhindered into that first healing sleep, floating with bright Charter marks and true rest. 

“You should know that there has been fighting in Corvere” said Sabriel, breaking into his thoughts. She stilled his alarmed start with a calmly raised hand. “You family are all safe. Your uncle has had them all return to Amberne, for safety.” She looked apologetic. “Sameth was against telling you this early, but agreed that it was better you should hear it from me than from some soldier or nurse prone to gossip…” she grimaced, “…or worse still, from the front page of the _Times_.” 

Nick nodded again, mutely absorbing the news. Words had felt rather foreign to him since he had woken, as though he could not quite fit what he was thinking into their narrow bonds anymore. He hoped the feeling would pass soon; he felt rather a fool as the Queen of the Old Kingdom sat by his bedside, giving him a look of concerned appraisal as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish. 

Except she was not only the Queen of the Old Kingdom, he immediately corrected himself. She was also his best friend’s mother, an Ancelstierran by upbringing, and most importantly, she was the Abhorsen. He even knew a little better what that truly meant now. He had always believed, back in his schooldays when Sam had spoken of it, that being the Abhorsen was some ceremonial, ritual position within Old Kingdom religious observance, the intricacies of which he had never understood before. Or never cared about, he thought uncomfortably. 

But now he knew what Sabriel spent her life - _risked_ her life - doing, or he knew roughly. Still, he knew more than he ever wanted to. He shuddered at the mere thought of the Dead, and of the Free Magic that had burned through his blood and mind and heart for so long, eating him away from the inside. Sabriel must have been fighting so hard, for so long… she had the look of a warrior about her, he realised, another thing he seemed to know without understanding quite how.

He tried to focus once more, realising that a silence had fallen that in other situations might have become tense. He had been taught from an early age never to let a silence fall for too long when entertaining guests, particularly ladies of high status, and there were surely no ladies of higher status than Sabriel. He cursed his rudeness once more. His mind kept doing this lately, running away with him. 

But Sabriel did not seem impatient. Instead, she was gazing around his room, which was of course rather bare, as he had only the tattered rags of the clothes he had been wearing, that day at Forwin Mill. “Do you need anything?” she asked.

He shook his head. “They’ve been giving me plenty of food, though I can’t really eat it all, as I am. And I’m not really up to wearing much apart from pyjamas yet, I’m afraid to say.“ Suddenly he remembered. “Oh! Sam was here to see me, and he left me a gift.” He pointed to the gold coin that lay on the bedside table, smiling despite himself. “Look, it does this.” He flipped the coin into the air, where it hung, spinning. “It works by Charter magic, he said. He made it, too! He really is very clever at making things.”

Sabriel laughed a little then, watching the coin spin with a wry smile. “Well, I’m glad that my son at last found a willing audience for his feather coins. Let me know if it gets irritating, and I’ll spell it into stillness for you. The novelty of those things tends to wear off.”

Nick snatched the feather coin out of the air. 

“But yes” Sabriel was saying, her eyes far away. “Yes, you’re right in that Sam is indeed _very_ clever at making things.” She smiled, following his motion with her eyes as he placed the feather coin back on the bedside table. After a moment though, she frowned. 

“What’s that?”

“What?” he looked back at the table. “Oh!” he picked up the fragment of splintered wood. “It’s a piece of wind flute. They have them on the Perimeter, to… well, to guard against the Dead I suppose, but they got smashed, somehow…” he tailed off, then stared up at Sabriel, meeting her gaze, her dark eyes wide with surprise. A sudden realisation struck him, or perhaps he had known before and merely forgotten; things like that had been slipping his mind like sand from a closed fist lately. “…You… _you_ made them, didn’t you?”

Sabriel nodded, slowly. “I did.”

Nick hung his head. “The wind flutes were destroyed, by Hedge and the Dead, as they crossed the Wall. I’m… I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do to stop it… no…” he faltered and clenched his fist, fighting the molten-hot guilt that was rising once again in his throat. “No. I turned my back to what was happening, closed my eyes to it. It’s my fault all of this was able to happen in the first place, my fault that people got hurt, killed…” the words were tumbling out of him too quickly now. “It’s… it’s all my fault… if I had only listened to Lirael, tried a little harder, if I could have stopped it… they’re dead because of me! The whole _world_ could have been destroyed. I’m no better than him, no better than Hedge - ”

“Nicholas.” He broke off then, with a quiet, gasping whimper, as he felt warm arms go about him, holding him tightly. Sabriel had pulled him close against her in a hug; the angle was awkward, as she was seated beside the bed in which he was sitting up, but immediately the crawling, grasping panic that had risen in him a moment before abated a little. It was a good feeling. He also felt the Charter mark on his forehead glow a little, in proximity to her own, and the power within her. 

After a moment, she drew back, still holding him by the shoulders. “Nicholas” she said, and her voice was a little more stern again. “You are not to blame yourself, for any of it, do you understand? You are the _least_ at fault here.” She shook her head, pain clear in her face. “This was never supposed to happen at all, let alone in Ancelstierre, and even when it did I should have protected anyone caught up in the webs of the Destroyer. It’s my duty to do so, and I failed you.” She bowed her head, clasping her hands together. “And… Nicholas Sayre, I am so, _so_ sorry for everything that has been done to you.”

Nick stared at her, open mouthed for a time as the silence spread out between them, completely at a loss as to how to respond. Finally he frowned. “Sabriel?”

She raised her head, meeting his eyes again. “Yes?”

He picked up the piece of splintered wind flute, holding it between his cupped hands. “At… at the end, when the Destroyer was close to being whole once more…” he tailed off. 

“You don’t have to say it, if it hurts.”

“No! I _do_ have to say this. I do.” He steeled himself for a moment longer. “Near… near the end, I started trying… I started trying to fight it. I knew it was there, and though there wasn’t much I could do, for what it was worth, I was able to fight it off a little. To think for myself. I thought…” he took a deep, shuddering breath, “I thought that if I at least did something, anything, to try to stop it, then that would be better than nothing.” He smiled a little. “It was Lirael that made me realise that, actually.” He looked back at Sabriel. “And I thought that even if there was nothing I could do, then better to die as myself. Better to die free, if we were all to die, then to die as _It’s_ creature, as a slave.” She was nodding encouragingly, so he carried on. “And the thing that allowed me to realise that…” he held up the fragment of wind flute. “It was this.”

Sabriel frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I found it, at the Perimeter. Whenever I was touching it… I could think for myself. I _was_ myself. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It… it was the Charter marks, I suppose…” he looked up at her again. “But it was also you. I mean, Sam told me what happened, so I know that really you helped Lirael save us all… but even before that… she started me thinking, and this helped me hold on. I couldn’t have done it on my own, and not without this. And…” he realised he was rambling, and took a deep, calming breath. “What I meant to say is, I want to thank you, Sabriel.” He smiled. “You saved me, when I couldn’t save myself.” He held out the piece of wind flute. “Here. I don’t need it anymore, so I’m giving it back.”

Sabriel stared at him for a long moment, her hands coming up and cupping around his, clasping the fragment of Charter magic-limned wood. At last she smiled, wearily. Gently, she pushed his hands back. “Keep it, Nicholas Sayre. It’s yours. May it always remind you of who you are.”

Nick nodded, solemnly, realising just now that he was quite unwilling to let go of the fragment of broken wood after all. 

“The wind flutes must be replaced, and soon” mused Sabriel, who was staring at the light falling through the translucent curtains. “Once Lirael is healed, I think I will take her with me when I go to place the new ones. She will need the learning experience.” She smiled. “But that piece… that one’s yours. I can even renew the marks in it, though its power is not much at all without the full cycle of spells cast on the wind flutes. Just fragmented marks.”

“No, it’s alright” he said. “I like it just like this. To help me remember.”

She nodded, and thought for a moment longer. “If you like, I can ask Sam to carve it into an amulet for you to wear around your neck.”

Nick didn’t even pause very long to consider how his old self could have laughed at the idea. “Yes” he said. “Yes, thank you. I would like that very much.”


End file.
